A Memoir- the Testament

by Jean Meslier

  48. IT’S ALSO AN ABUSE TO ALLOW SO MANY MENDICANT MONKS, WHO COULD WORK IN SOCIETY AND MAKE AN HONEST LIVING.

  If it’s an abuse to allow so many rented monks to make vows of poverty and continual mortification, and still to possess or enjoy such great goods and wealth, and with that to still be a burden on the Public, is no less an abuse than allow there to be so many others who are called Mendicants and who are certainly an additional burden on the public, since they live only from the collections, and the alms they ask and are given. This is what the Bishop of Belley says about the abuse of this immense number of mendicant monks[658]:

  The mendicant monks or Cenobites are compelled to make a living with their hands, as it says in the eighth chapter of the Rule of St. Francis, and his Testament, which orders his brothers to work, in order to live from the wages of their work, and if they are given no wages for their work, he allows them to have recourse to the Lord’s Table, by asking alms from door to door, etc. Ever since Pope Nicholas III, by his declaration, exempted from manual labor those who were busy with clerical duties, either administering the Sacraments or preaching. Thus, according to their original institution, they were only allowed to beg when they were not paid for their manual or spiritual work, and they were only allowed to organize collections for the purpose of services they would provide to the Public. So much so that, prior to holding the collection, they had to have already provided the service to those from whom they were collecting: for it’s a very culpable thing for there to be so many mendicant monks, all of which are fed at the expense of the Public, in idleness, and for there to be so few, who were capable to provide services to the Public, which is quite onerous for the people.

  This is what he says about the huge number of these mendicant monks:

  Of the 98 Orders of monks in the Church, there are 34 different ones which are mendicants, and perhaps even more. Following the Catalogue, which makes it the disinterested Director of the Treatise of cloistered appropriation. A single one of these 34 orders amounts to 300 thousand people, another has 180 thousand, the rest of the 32 Orders of these mendicant monks goes on from there; to try to push down this calculation would be to frighten the world and startle every Monarch on Earth, it amounts to many millions. Let us forgive the Arithmetic and restrict ourselves to such a low number, which can’t be contradicted, which will be some 1200 thousand mendicant cenobites. It is certain that not even the 20th part of this huge number are preachers and confessors. Let’s posit that the 12th part of them are, there remain eleven hundred thousand mouths, both of choristers and the servants of these choristers, the Lay Brethren. Here, says Mr. du Belley, are many Prebends and Canonries on the back of the Public. Eleven hundred thousand Prebendaries, who are all true Israelites, who murmur that they are not satisfied. The point is to know whether Pope Nicholas III and his successors meant, when they confirmed the unendowed cenobitic Orders, to found, at public expense, eleven hundred thousand Canonries, who have no other obligation than to chant and sing in a choir, relieving them of any work and burdening the Christian public with their upkeep. For, to say that they are not Prebendaries or Canons is a frivolous loophole, since it’s known that every mendicant cenobite is better and more securely remunerated by his petitionary than many canons and well-grounded cenobites are from their possessions, and that, in a word, having nothing in appearance, they possess everything in effect, and that with less care, toil, trouble, and fatigue. For, just as the pen cuts through iron in the age we live in, i.e., the men of the judiciary are able to exhume the Nobility even before they die, so likewise the petitoire is of far greater import than the possessoire. Which is clear from many examples. All that is beautiful and rare in the most illustrious cities is located in the monasteries of those we call beggars. If there are ruins and repairs, and anything dilapidated, it’s located in the funded Monasteries: they, i.e., the beggars, are the masters of all consciences and of all the city funds, and they only have to ask to get what they want; they are minor Gods, they speak and things happen. To fail to correspond to their will or desires, trying to help those who are actually poor, is to risk the loss of honor, reputation, and credit. That is only a very meager idea of the secrets of the Petitoire of these mendicant monks: for it’s well known that there are communities without rents in the large cities, which in 7 or 8 years have built monasteries of 100 and 120 thousand écus, not including the large and abundant maintenance of 60 and 80 Brothers and so many Church ornaments and precious silverware, as there is in the sacristies of these poor monasteries, which amount to more than 100 thousand écus. Tell me, how do they get through such discomforts, how must they weep over their empty bellies on their heaps of goals and wheat? Is this how one observes one’s vows of poverty, to live this way in the abundance of all goods?

  The mendicant monks claim an exemption from physical and spiritual work, on the basis that, as they put it, they have renounced the rents and revenues, both in common and individually, collections and begging take the place of rents and domains, without their acquiring the obligation to work to make a living. But that precisely is to open the door wide to idleness, to ruin, and to the destruction of all Republics. For if a lack of rents, of revenue, allows one to live on alms without working, then every Fast-talker, every Rogue, every Gangster, every Lowlife, every Reprobate and every Scumbag are beyond criticism, since they have neither rents nor revenues. And if those who claim to be in a state of perfection in, the perfect Religion, not common and everyday people, are entitled to live on alms without any obligation to work, neither bodily nor spiritual, according to the peculiar doctrine of the mendicant monks, in the golden book of the Heureux succez of Religion, if that occurs on the green grass, why not also on the dry? If that is accorded to the perfect ones among us, why shouldn’t the imperfect ones try to follow this Holy Example, and aspire thereby to the perfection of Holy Idleness? If the public Laws condemn the able-bodied beggars to severe penalties, punishing them like robbers who steal alms, by artifice and mendicancy, from those who are truly impoverished, which belong to them and would be distributed to them by the piety of good people, who would dare say that the Church, by approving their rule, has wished to overturn the holy and salutary Laws in favor of those who should serve as the salt of the earth and the light of the world, and who ought to boast, like St. Paul, that they work harder than anyone, and that it authorized them to drink and eat without working, and to live on the fruits coming from the sweat of the brow of everyone else?

  Those who aspire to perfection must work harder than others, since sweat is on the forehead of virtue and the temple of toil is before that of honor and not to remain in idleness and to live from begging. It is more suitable, more glorious, and more praiseworthy to give than to receive, as Jesus Christ said, according to St. Paul[659]: Beatius est magis dare quam accipere. “It would be better,” says Ecclesiasticus, “to die than to be always in poverty”: melius est mori quam indigere. “A bad life”, he added, “it is to go from house to house, begging one’s bread”: Vita nequam hospitandi de domo in domum; “it’s a miserable life”, he says[660], “going from house to house, since”, he says, “where one is a stranger, one doesn’t dare open one’s mouth. My child,” he said, “do not lead a life of begging, for it is better to die than beg. The life of a man”, he says, “who waits at another’s table, should not be considered a life, for he torments himself in pursuit of the meat of others; but a wise and prudent man will keep from this; for mendicancy,” he says, “is only sweet and pleasant for those who have neither shame nor honor.” Solomon[661], who was the wisest of all, asked God in his prayers for only what was necessary to life, and begged Him never to give him excessive riches, or to let him fall into the necessity of begging, for fear, he said, that abundance might bring pride and arrogance, and that mendicancy would lead or constrain him to do evil. These maxims are quite far from those of our monks, beggars, and they are quite clearly see that this is an error and an abuse of them want, as they claim, to incl
ude the perfection of virtue in a cowardly and shameful mendicancy.

  With respect to all the various and ridiculous forms and shapes of their clothing, the same judgment is merited, which Tertullian once made of many similar habits which he saw in his time being used among the priests of the Idols and the false Gods. This is what he says of them in his little book of the mantle…

  I make no exception for this novelty of clothing, that a bunch of bizarre, extravagant, and superstitious people have introduced, the theater has never seen any so ridiculous as these, the pantalons are nothing in comparison; they are so grotesquely dressed up that if the latter make us laugh, the former make us faint. But what the buffoons do for amusement and laughter, these grim hypochondriacs do from piety, to bewilder the Reason less and accompany their extravagance with some sort of respect, which compels us to whistle at them. They swear that a Deity dressed them up like that, that it’s only to honor Him and not their own whims that has led them to assume these habits, which they do contrary to the religion which they take expressly as a guarantee, if they dressed differently. They are impostors who bring such a sacred thing into their daydreams, and who claim that a God is accountable for their nonsense. Some are dressed in white, without a trace of any other color, with a ribbon, and wear a hat or a wig shaped like one, with a cake they set on top of it. You may say that they’re dressed in darkness, since their robes are so dark. The priests of Saturn are neither white nor black, they are completely red, they have a tunic full of large scarlet bands, with a fire-colored mantle. Those of Aesculapius have no clothes but those of the Greeks, and are shod like them. What variety, I implore you, and what bizarre stuff! But all this originated with the Gods. Who says so? madmen, who wanted to pass off their own whims as a stroke of Divinity and persuade us that by doing what the most extravagant men would do, there is a superhuman wisdom and that, to be divine, one must be as stupid as they are. Still, people stop to listen to them, as to false oracles, and their impostures are, among men, so many mysteries, and that is why we believe have to honor their clothes and bring to their madness, as some high and extraordinary wisdom.

  That’s what this author so judiciously said about this ridiculous variety of forms and shapes of the outfits of those he mocked. We ought to say and think the same thing about this ridiculous and bizarre variety of forms and shapes of the outfits of our monks; for they are certainly no less ridiculous than the ones he made fun of.

  This is what the Bishop of Belley said:

  The monks of old times didn’t stop at the form or the color of their clothes, they were more interested in dressing up in the virtues and frocks, hoods, sandals, etc. This variety and distinction in clothing wasn’t seen in the Church ten or eleven hundred years back. And certainly, I do not know whether it isn’t this variegation of robes and this extreme variety of hoods, of frocks and sandals, of scapulars and tunics, etc., which today make those who wear them so unimportant. For we now see that these names like brothers, monks, frocks, and hoods, which were formerly respected, are now received so poorly that one doesn’t have to call a monk by his name to upset him. The Founders of the Orders of monks didn’t determine the form or the color of the clothing, but only their simplicity and coarseness, to inspire a sense of humility, penance, and the renunciation of the world. The great variety of clothing that was only invented later, on the occasion of various reforms which were introduced into the cenobitic Orders, to distinguish them from each other. This is why some are completely white, others are completely black, others both black and white, some are completely grey, others are brown, others white and grey, others are white and brown, etc. Some wear large and long frocks, others have narrow ones, others have pyramid-shaped ones, some have long and some have short ones, some are pointed, others round and others are square, others pyramidal, some let their beards grow, others shave, some have leather belts, some have wool belts, and others have ropes for their belts. What a strange, motley show!

  Cornelius Agrippa, in his book on the vanity of the sciences, calls them troops of show-offs and comedy actors - turba Histrionun, he said, cuculati, vorbigeri, imberbes, funigeri, loripedes, lignipedes, nigriti, albati, etc. As deformed and ridiculous as all these variegated forms and shapes of their clothing, they also want, like those spoken of by Tertullian, for them to be of divine institution, and regarded as something holy. This is also why one sees that, in all the depictions of their holy brotherhood, they present their Founders or the Founder of their Orders, as receiving certain indications of the approbation of their Rules from Heaven. One sees, for example, St. Dominic receiving a rosary directly from the hands of the Virgin Mary; St. Francis receiving the cords from Heaven; St. Simon Stock receiving a scapular; and St. Augustine, leather belts with horn buckles from the very hands of this Queen of Heaven. After that, says Belley, who could help laughing at these mysterious visions and miraculous revelations, which are found only in the chronicles of the monks. It isn’t, he says, an article of Faith that these things occurred, and there is no obligation to see the visions or illusions of the blessed Brothers as divine Revelations.

  These are the thoughts of a Turk on this large quantity and diversity of monks, which he saw among Christians: “I fail to grasp,” he said, “why they cultivate spiritual leeches, which can do nothing but suck the blood of the Nation to the last drop.” He was right to refer to them this way; for all these people are indeed leeches, who, on the pretext of attending more scrupulously than others to the worship of an imaginary Deity, and on the pretext of attending daily, at certain times, to devotedly adore a God of dough and flour, offering Him incense, making dozens of genuflections and bowing deeply to Him, muttering and singing Him Psalms and Canticles, which this God doesn’t can cannot hear, since He has no ears to hear or eyes to see the tribute they pay to Him, any more than nostrils to smell the incense and perfume they offer, imagining they are doing sufficient to deserve, on one hand, the great wealth they possess, and on the other, to have, by having collections made everywhere, the fat and abundant Alms they are given, without any obligation to do any other work. This is also why, after having devoted only a few hours of the day and night to the cult of their Deities and their dough-God, they have nothing left to do but rest, engage in recreation, stroll, play games, eat sumptuous feasts, and grow fat in a sweet and pious idleness. For it cannot be denied that this is the usual life of all these do-nothing monks, all these do-nothing Abbots, and all these do-nothing Canons, and who have such great wealth everywhere, and such large and numerous incomes.

  There are certainly enough of these sorts in the world, there are certainly enough of all these mass- and breviary sayers, of all these matins- and complines-sayers, of all these Oration- and Rosary-sayers; the way they all assume disguises of such diverse and ridiculous forms of clothing; the way they shut themselves up in cloisters, the way they walk barefoot in the snow and mud, and apply discipline to themselves every day; the way they all go at certain fixed hours day and night to sing Psalms and Canticles in their churches. Wild birds do all the chirping and singing we need in the fields and forests; the masses have no reason to feed so many people so well, who do nothing but sing in the temples. And it’s too much to have them going every day, genuflecting and prostrating so profoundly. There’s too much, I say, of all that in the world, all of it is of no utility whatsoever, it serves no purpose, all that is stupidity and vanity, and even if they spent their entire days and all night mumbling and singing, and performing endless amounts of devoted bows before their idol of dough, it would still be absolutely futile to anyone. It is, therefore, clearly an abuse, and a great one, to trade such things for such great wealth, and to feed them so well at public expense, and to the great harm of the good and the best workers, who are busy every day in honest and useful employment, and who often lack, nevertheless, the basic necessities in life. “Nature alone,” said wise Mentor to Telemachus, “could supply from her bountiful breast all that is needed for an infinite number of moderate and
hard-working men, but it’s the pride,” he said, “the softness, and the idleness of certain men, which bring so many others into fearsome misery and poverty, yes, certainly, it’s this great number of useless and idle people who reduce the rest to abject poverty.”

  But, it will be objected, all the Clergy, all these Abbots, all these Canons, and all these monks pray every day for the people, they celebrate the holy mysteries every day, they offer the holy sacrifice of the Mass every day, which is, as it’s claimed, of infinite worth and merit, with their prayers they deflect the scourges of God, and bring upon the peoples the grace and blessings of Heaven, which is, it will be claimed, the greatest and most desirable benefit of all, and therefore, it is fair and reasonable to provide them abundantly with the wherewithal to live and be honestly maintained, since they provide so many benefits for the world with their prayers. But what vanity is in this, a single hour of good labor is worth more than all that. If all the monks and priests celebrated 20, 30, and even 50 Masses every day, put together they wouldn’t be worth a single bellows-tack, as they say. A tack is useful and necessary, and often indispensable, but all the prayers, all the oraisons, and all the masses that the monks utter and the other priests might say, are completely useless, and serve no purpose other than bringing money to those who say them. A single swipe of the hoe, for example, made by a poor laborer in the ground to cultivate it, is useful and serves to produce grain to feed people, and by dint of striking many times with hoes in the ground, the good laborers would produce grain and wheat to live on. A good ploughman produces, with his plow, more than he needs to live, but all the priests together can never, with all their prayers and all their so-called holy sacrifices of their Masses, contribute to the production of a single grain, or do anything that is of the least utility in the world, the profession of the least artisans is useful and necessary in every Republic, even the actors and flutists and violinists have their own merits and usefulness; for those of such professions at least help to cheer up and entertain people; it’s quite just that those who spend all their days usefully employed, especially in unpleasant and toilsome work, it’s quite just, I repeat, that they should have at least a few hours of amusement, and consequently it is right for there to be flutists and violin players to occasionally entertain and amuse those who are worn out from working. But the profession of the priests, especially that of the monks, is only a profession of errors, of superstitions and imposture, and consequently, far from such a profession being thought useful and necessary in a good and wise Republic, it should rather be seen as harmful and pernicious, and thus, instead of lavishing such favors on men of such a profession, they should instead be absolutely forbidden all the superstitious and abusive functions of their ministry, and force them absolutely to work in some honest and useful exercise, like anyone else. The basest and the final employments in a good Republic are useful and necessary, it’s necessary for people to do them, they can’t be done without. There is a need, for example, in all Parishes, of shepherds and swineherds to watch the flocks, and there’s a universal need for people to spin wool and wash laundry. But what need is there in a Republic for so many prayers, so many monks and nuns, who live in idleness and sloth? What need is there for all these pious idlers and pious lazybones? Certainly, there is no need for them, and they are of no real utility in the world. So, once again, it is an abuse, a great abuse, to allow so many monks and nuns, and so many priests and clergymen, to unnecessarily burden the Public. It’s clearly against right reason and against justice; so much so that even the Roman Church couldn’t help but acknowledge this abuse by the monks. This is also why, to halt the continual progress of this abuse, it made direct prohibitions against any later inventions of new forms of Religions, anticipating as it did that this great multitude and diversity of monks might bring chaos and confusion into the Church. This prohibition was first made in the Lateran Council under Pope Innocent III. This is how the Fathers of this Council speak: “And so that this great multitude and variety of monastic Religions should give rise to no further confusion in the Church, we explicitly and firmly forbid anyone from inventing or introducing, in the future, any new Religion. And should any desire to enter into Religion, let them use one of those which are approved.” -- Ne nimia Religionis diversitas gravem in Ecclesia Dei confusionem induceret, firmiter prohibemus ne quis de caetero Religionem inveniat, sed quicumque ad Religionem convenire voluerit, unam de aprobatis assumat.[662] The same decree was renewed and confirmed in the Council of Lyon, as can be seen in Chap. Relig. Cod. tit. in 6., where we read these words: “The general Council has wisely forbidden too much diversity in Religion, lest this over-diversity might bring confusion into the Church.” And after having reported the decree of this Council, this comes next: “We strictly forbid anyone in the future to invent any new Order, or any new Religion -- Strictius inhibentes, say the Fathers of the Council of Lyon, ne aliquis de caetero novum ordinem aut Religionem adinveniat. By which it is clear that the Church itself recognizes an abuse in the institution and tolerance of such a multitude and such a great variety of monks and nuns, who are an unnecessarily burden on the public.